Screwing up an accident investigation and another mortgage fraud arrest...

I'm still trying to reconcile the traffic accident blunder that Detective Baluja made, how can you screw up something so simple? I mean after all a legally parked car got rear ended and Baluja ended up giving the parked car a ticket! To simplify, lets take a look at the following video...

Please disregard the black car in the video thats obviously involved in some sort of illicit activity, concentrate on the red car that appears midway through the video. Go back and take another look if necessary. In case the video was confusing, midway through the video we see a red Mazda hauling ass and then slamming into a building. Are we all on the same page? OK! Imagine now that you call the cops, they show up AND GIVE THE FCUKING BUILDING A TICKET! That pretty much sums up how Detective Baluja wrote up the accident back in 2003. I'm still having a hard time figuring out how our buddy Jorge went on to investigate complex crimes like mortgage fraud, I am getting hints though as to how he made his way up the ranks. As soon as I verify whether these things I'm hearing about the good detective are true, I'll post.

Moving right along, lets go on to another case of mortgage fraud. Today we're going to look at case # F-09-021573 and the arrest of one Ernesto Portuondo (DOB 09/05/1970). Mr. Portuondo was charged on July 1, 2009 with the following:

1. GRAND THEFT 1ST DEG
2. MORTGAGE/FALSE REPRE
3. UTTER FORGED INSTRU
4. UTTER FORGED INSTRU
5. UTTER FORGED INSTRU
6. MORTGAGE FRAUD/>100K
7. FORGERY
8. MLAUN/PROC/>20K<100k>
9. MLAUN/PROC/>20K<100k>
10. MLAUN/PROC/>20K<100k>
11. MLAUN/PROC/>20K<100k>
12. MLAUN/PROC/>20K<100k>
13. MLAUN/PROC/>20K<100k>

That's whats shows on the clerks website, but somehow they only show 9 charges rather than the 13 that they actually list. As I've mentioned before, I'm not an attorney nor do I have anything other than a rudimentary understanding of the legal system and the county's websites, so bear with me. With that said, it looks like Mr. Portuondo has some serious problems ahead of him! Lets start with bail, whether you count 13 charges or 9, based on what we had seen in the Bernardo Barrera case, this guys going to have come up with some SERIOUS COIN to get his ass out of jail right? This is bad enough where you'll have to break out the kids piggy banks and even sell your ultra rare Clinton commemorative coin! LOOK AT THE CHARGES! I'm thinking AT LEAST A MILLION BUCKS RIGHT?

WRONG! Mr. Portuondo needed only $54,000 in bail to get out of jail, that's 9 charges with only $6,000 per charge. See what I'm getting at here boys and girls? Look at this case as well as the bail amounts in the Michele Walters case then compare that to the bail amounts for those arrested in the Barrera case. If you use the standard set for say the attorney that was arrested, Mr. Portuondo would be looking at bail in the neighborhood of $225,000 (at $25,000 per charge) or if you use the bail amounts for John Romney ($150,000 per charge) Mr. Portuondo would be looking at a bail amount of $1,350,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In a nutshell it looks like the bail amounts for the people arrested in the Barrera case were from ANOTHER FCUKING PLANET! Based on what we've seen to date in three other cases of mortgage fraud, how the hell can you make sense of the bail amounts in the Barrera case? I can't, but I have a pretty good idea of what went on or was at least supposed to. We'll get to that on Friday.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a bunch of documents that I requested from the MDPD that will open up a whole new chapter in our investigation. Its going to be a busy week, stay tuned, PLENTY OF DRAMA GUARANTEED!